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Friday, October 26, 2012

I doubt that Charles Addison Boutelle
was legally insane, but he was confined to an asylum - and was promptly re-elected to his ninth term as a Republican Congressman. Still, the
voters must have suspected that something was not right with the
contentious old sailor, since his margin of victory was well below
his usual level. But sane or not, his whole life was a testament to
the power of one crazy man in a world run by mostly sane people.

The dictatorial speaker of the House,
Hoosier Joe Cannon opined that Charles Boutelle (above), “Could get into
more controversies in shorter time than any man I ever knew.” And
Boutelle's own daughter, in praising her father, asserted, “He
could always command attention. No one ever dozed or attended to
their correspondence when he was speaking.” Between those two
quotes lies the shadow of a politician whose mouth (and pen) got him
into a lot of trouble. And calling him “The handsomest man in the
Congress”, as he was well known, seems the reverse to describing a
woman as having a good personality. So, I'm pretty sure that Charlie
was indeed a loony politician, the kind who drives friends and
enemies absolutely nuts.

The young Lt. Boutelle had led the
Union naval charge into the Confederate stronghold of Mobile Bay, in
August of 1864. He came home to Bangor an official hero. After the
war, first as editor and then from 1874 co-owner (along with his
brother Edward) of the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, Boutelle's
dynamic and hyperbolic editorials made him a Republican power across
New England. And his willingness to directly buy votes (there was no
secret ballot, yet) built the Republican dominance of Maine over the
post war generations.

Boutelle first threw his editorial
support behind the ambitious and avaricious James Blaine (above, in shame), known
accurately as “the continental liar from the state of Maine”. Mr.
Boutelle attended the Republican convention in 1876, and in 1880 he
was the national chairman of the Blaine Clubs. Blaine came within a
handful of votes of being the Republican Presidential nominee both
times. Finally in 1884 Boutelle 's unwavering support paid off. He
was named the state Party Chairman, and heading into the Presidential
campaign that year, the Bangor editor was considered Blaine's “right
hand man...and is even now talked of for a cabinet position”. But
the nation was saved this turn of events when Blaine lost the
election to Grover Cleveland by ½ of 1% of the popular vote

In the meantime, the
“robustly-conservative” Boutelle had decided to run for congress
himself, selling a mix of jingoism and empire building. He lost his
first attempt in September of 1880, by 855 votes. I guess he ran out
of money. But two years later he threw his growing fortune into his
election for Maine's “at-large” seat in Congress, and in
September of 1884 he won Maine's 4th district seat, which
he was to occupy for most of the rest of his life.

Boutelle was a supporter and friend of
the legendary Speaker of the House, “Czar” Thomas Reed (above), also from
Maine. Then in 1890, the New York Times observed election day in
several small Maine towns, and noted that that Reed influenced the
results with cash. “Boodle has elected him, operating directly in
the purchase of votes and indirectly by discouraging the Democrats to
such an extent as to keep hundreds of them away from the polls.”
The story went on to say, “...the richest and most influential man
in Wells, sat in the (city hall) with a pile of (dollar) bills in his
lap and...in the presence of scores of people, exchanged money for
votes for Reed...at least 300 votes (were) purchased in Biddeford”,
a small town near the New Hampshire border, at up to $20 a vote. It
was a smear, of course. No Republican needed to buy an election in Maine.
But by the following Sunday, preachers in pulpits across Maine were
lecturing on the need for a secret ballot, as was used in Australia.
When in 1891 the Maine legislature seriously considered the Australia
ballot, Reed and Boutelle sent a joint letter, warning that such
procedures were too complicated for the average voter. But they were
swimming against the tide. Under the new system, in the September
1894 election, Reed won re-election by 17,383 votes. But by September
of 1898 his margin of victory had slipped to 12, 380. Change was on
the wind

And it shifted most dramatically during
the 1896 presidential campaign, when a surrogate speaker for the
Democrat candidate William Jennings Bryant (above), visited Maine. He was
Alexander Troop, editor of the Democratic leaning New Haven Union
newspaper. Well, Boutelle could not resist throwing some mud at his
New England rival, running an uncredited story that Troop had once
been arrested for indecent exposure. The outraged Troop filed a libel
suite, demanding a retraction. As the trial date approached, friends
convicted the bull headed Boutelle to leave the negotiations to his
friend, Speaker Reed. Finding that Troop would not take a quiet
payoff, Reed wrote out a retraction on the spot. Boutelle responded
by telegraph that he would be “damned” if he would print anything
like that in his paper. Even after Reed explained that without a
retraction, it might not remain his paper for long, Boutelle refused
to budge. The arguments swung back and forth until Reed threatened to
walk away from their friendship. Boutelle ate crow on the front page
of his newspaper. But by then the Democrat had been beaten, and both
Reed and Boutelle were safely re-elected by the usual wide margins.

Then, on the afternoon of Thursday,
December 21, 1899, Charles Boutelle was entertaining in the
electrified Young's Hotel (above), on Court street, in the financial district
of Boston. Charles had used the hotel for years as a lay over
between his homes in Washington and Maine, and a place to make
business and political deals out of the public eye. But this
afternoon, after an otherwise normal morning, Charles collapsed in
the 100 foot long dining room. Rather than taking him upstairs to his
suite, he was carried unconscious into a parlor. Dr. F.W. Johnson, a
well known surgeon, was sent for, but would only tell the press that
Boutelle's condition was “serious, but not necessarily fatal”.
Some considered that report optimistic. In fact Boutelle was
delirious and ranting. Late that night Boutelle's brother Edward
arrived from Bangor, and about midnight told the press Charles was
suffering from “congestion of the brain, brought on by acute
indigestion”, or as his Bangor Whig reported it, “by the strain
and overwork in connection with his official duties”.

The next day Charles was carried via a
private rail car to Bangor, but it was quickly realized that he was
too violent to be treated at home. The 62 year old was transported
back to Boston, and taken to the McLean asylum in Belmont. Seventy
years earlier, it was McLean staff member Mary Sawyer, whose
relationship with a pet had inspired the poem “Mary Had A Little
Lamb”. But it was also the first psychiatric hospital in America
which studied the biological causes of mental illness. Just five
years earlier, under Superintendent Dr. Edward Cowles, the hospital
moved to a new hill top “cottage plan” campus (above), where patents
could be treated in a residential environment. At week's end the New
York Times reported that although “officials are very reticent in
the matter...(Congressman Boutelle was) not considered in any
immediate danger.” But other than an occasional day trip, he would
never leave the McLean again. And his medical bills would force his
daughters and brother to sell the Whig Courier that March. Despite
his condition, Charles would be re-elected back in Maine, while still
a patient in his Boston mental hospital.

It wasn't that Maine was short of loyal
Republicans eager to replace the “handsomest man in congress”,
nor that Maine voters did not think it important they be represented
by a functional congressman. But 1900 would be a Presidential
election year, and Reed simply had too much else on his plate. So, at
the end of December it was announced that the Navy committee which
Boutelle chaired, would return to work in January, with the now
hospitalized congressman still officially its chairman. His daughters
still collected his salary, and his party still had the use of his
patronage. Come September Charles Boutelle won his last election,
probably already unaware he had ever held public office. He won it by
only 10,000 votes, instead of his usual 18,000. And in November the
powers of his office, exercised by his friend Thomas Reed, were able
to help fellow Republican and fellow Maine man, William McKinley, to win the
White House, defeating (again) the Democrat Bryant.

As soon as the election was over, Reed
moved in the House to have Charles (above) retroactively appointed a retired captain
in the U.S. Navy. Considering his Civil War record, and his
dedication in creating the “Great White Fleet” which had just won
the Spanish American War of 1898, this seemed a reasonable reward to
an eight term congressman, who at the time had no other pension. To
encourage the Senate to agree, Dr. Cowles up in Boston was authorized
to issue a public statement on the first anniversary of Boutelle's
admission to McLean's. “At the present time,” said the doctor,
“the indications are not so favorable...for a degree of recovery..
.In my own opinion he should never resume the cares of active life or
under take any business responsibilities, and he may live but a few
years.”

It seems likely Charles was suffering
from an advanced case of Altzeimers, first identified by Dr. Aloysius
Alzheimer. In 1901 “Alois” began working in Frankfurt on the
Main, Germany, with a 51 year old woman named Auguste Deter (above), who had
suddenly begun screaming in the middle of the night. She was
befuddled and had lost increasingly large chunks of her memory. When
Dr. Alzheimer questioned her, she would repeat, “Ich hab mich
verloren” - “I am lost”. Her dementia progressed rapidly until
her death on April 8, 1906. In a November 1906 speech, after
examining slides of her brain tissue using a new staining technique,
Dr. Alzheimer identified plaque build-up on the neurons in Auguste's
brain as identifying the disease. In effect the disease destroyed
her identity from the inside, as it had done five years earlier in
America to Charles Boutelle.

On Wednesday, January 16, 1901,
Charles' captain's pension went into effect. And on Sunday, March
3rd, Charles submitted his resignation from congress, the
day before the new congress convened. It was a play, of course. By
this stage of his disease, it is very unlikely Charles was capable of
signing a letter. Still the smooth transition did honor to its
probable architect, James Reed – call it the last act of friendship
for an old argumentative ally. And as if part of the same plan,
eleven weeks later, on Tuesday, May 21, 1901, Charles Addison
Boutelle died of pneumonia, a build up of fluid in his lungs, caused
by his inability to get out of bed.

He remains the only congressman on
record, to be re-elected while confined in a mental institution. But the
country is young, yet. Given us another 200 years, and I 'm sure we
will get at least one more.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

I hate to admit it but that effete, arrogant, pompous intellectual snobbish Frenchman Marcel Proust was right about two things - first, when he observed that “We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history”, and second that “A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.” Both of those profound insights struck me again recently when I stumbled upon an article in an archeology magazine (Antiquity), which illuminated a forgotten memory of the work of a quiet rock artist, named Gerald C. Bond. It may seem a complicated train of events, but please bare with me, while I try to explain how my mind works. (Good luck - hope you enjoy the ride.)

Professor Bond collected and cataloged rocks from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. This may have once seemed an esoteric pursuit, (although as a life long rock hound it sounds like heaven to me) but in that seemingly meaningless melange of sediments Professor Bond stumbled upon layers of limestone pebbles which had nothing to do with the ocean floor. With extraordinary perseverance, Professor Bond identified the pebbles as having come from particular cliffs in Eastern Canada. How did they get thousands of miles out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Professor Bond concluded the only delivery method that made sense was that an ancient glacier had ground against the cliffs, carried the limestone out to sea when it calved icebergs, which then melted and dropped the pebbles into the abyss. When other rocks on the sea floor were identified as coming from the same areas on land, the professor's suspicions were confirmed, and with it a way to measure climate change. More pebbles in a given layer indicated more icebergs, which indicated more melting glacier ice, which hinted at warmer temperatures and rising sea levels world wide.

What Professor Bond was eventually able to describe were eight bursts of cooling (now called Bond Events) since the last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. The bursts come in 1,500 year intervals, giving an almost respiratory aspect to our planet's atmosphere. And like a smoker who develops a cough, the deposits on the sea floor, as well as Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, recorded the increasing impact of burning fossil fuels on our planet's health. But they also record something else, equally as ominous and philosophically troubling.

When the weather cooled for Bond Event Seven, (ten thousand years ago) humans responded with the invention of agriculture. Bond Event Four occurred about six thousand years ago, and humans responded with the domestication of sheep and the invention of bronze. And Bond Event Three, which came four thousand years ago, brought on the collapse of great empires in Asia and Egypt, and, of more interest to this story, in an act of war at a ford across a slow, meandering river in northern Europe.

The river is the somnambulist Tollense (above). For more than ten thousand years it has followed the same sinuous forty-two mile course across forest and marshland in northeastern Germany, now winding this way, now twisting that as it hesitantly approaches the Baltic Sea. There is no time scale in its current, but in the sediments piled along its course, about the year 1250 BC. the Tollense preserved a desperate fight for survival. And we now know know something about the loser and winner of that battle.

The invaders were from the forests to the south, members of the Unetice culture. They were armed with standardized mass produced bronze daggers and hand axes. They were adorned with engraved bracelets and their robes were held together with bronze pins with perforated round heads. They came mounted on horses, and carried millet, which did not grow this far north. That suggests rations, which suggests an organized raiding party which was crossing the Tollense River in the summer, when the water level was down.

The Frisian villages along the Baltic coast were the likely target. These peoples buried their dead in stone crypts, and prayed to the male earth god Inguz, who drove his chariot across the sky as easily as he dived beneath the sea. The villagers enjoyed probably the best diet in the world, with plenty of surf and turf. They fished from long plank canoes with curved and pointed bows. They raised cattle corralled behind their village palisades. But their weapons were stone axes and wooden clubs like baseball bats. The bronze age was late in coming to the Baltic Sea. Copper and tin had to be heated to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit before they would form bronze, and that takes a lot of dry wood, and a knowledge of ceramics. A culture cannot afford that kind of technology unless it has something to sell. And it was not until recently that these proto-Scandinavian tribes had discovered their “metallum sudaticum”, amber.

Every time the level of the Baltic rose and then fell, with each successive glacier pulse, whole coastal pine forests had been flooded. And with each storm tide more and more fossilized pine tree sap from those now long dead forests washed up on the sandy Baltic beaches. The Frisian villagers who gathered the amber up in hand held nets could not have known where this amber had originated from anymore than the Celts in England knew their Sea Coal had a companion under their feet. But both peoples knew enough to gather the bounty left by the tide. The Frisians fashioned the amber into jewelry and sold and traded it with their inland neighbors. And that made the neighbors envious.

Some time near the mid summer solstice around three thousand eight hundred fifty years ago, some fifty or sixty Unetice raiders were attacked on the banks of the Tollense. It seems likely they were crossing the river, perhaps on their return, when they were attacked by perhaps 150 Frisians. We don't know how long the assault took, or the tactics employed by either side, but we know it was horribly violent.

Of the 100 skeletons uncovered along the river so far, almost all are young male adults (draft age), with many carrying injuries inflicted shortly before death; broken faces, damaged skulls, an arrow head embedded in an arm bone, a thigh bone fracture which mimics that still commonly suffered by horseback riders. The skeletons of the horses were also detritus of this bronze age battle. None of these bodies were buried with funeral goods. They were not buried by family or friends or even enemies. They lay in the river unattended for some time before a flood carried them downstream and stuffed them into a mud bank, like an ancient memento left between the pages of a forgotten diary.

The archaeologists who discovered these skeletons want to go back to learn more about this no longer pre-historic life and death struggle. It seems important. It seems to provide proof that four thousand years ago, war had already become a standardized, ritualized young man's game, just as it is today. And in all probability, the leaders of the Uentice and Frisians spoke about the honor and nobility of battle, and the necessary sacrifices of their brave young men who died along the ancient banks of the Tollense.

The archaeologists are going back to the banks of the Tollense, because they think there is more to learn, more skeletons to be uncovered. And the most important question they want an answer to is why in God's name were these young men murdering each other? Was it amber or gold? Was it slavery or freedom? Was it fish or faith? Four thousand years later the answer seems almost as important as it must have seemed to them. But we already know the answer.

In truth, we are the answer to all those questions. Those men without names died to create our world. And not a single one of them would have willing made that sacrifice if it had been offered to them, because for our world to be born, theirs had to die. The Unetice and the Frisian languages, art, religion and culture all had to be devoured before our language, art, religion and culture could come into existence. All history is cannibalism. No one willingly fights for a place at the table just to become the meal, but eventually we all are. The only ray of hope in Msr. Proust's dismal ethos is that it does not explain Professor Bond.

And in that I chose to find hope for humanity. Call me a romantic. Or maybe I'm still just a rock hound.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

I think the villain of our story is now Senator James Gunn.
He was a big man, and a vulgar bully with a quick temper, who cheated
the citizens of George out millions of dollars, when a million was
the equivalent of today's 12 billions. And when Gunn complained about
“dishonorable interference of some of my associates”, the
associate he was referring to was his fellow Senator from Georgia,
James Jackson. That makes Jackson the hero of this story. But if the
truth be told – and that is my goal, here – the personalities of
Senator Jackson and Senator Gunn were not all that different. They
were both rich and arrogant men. And they were both hotheads, known
to fight duels over issues of “honor”. In fact the only real
difference between Jackson and Gunn, was that Jackson was nominally
fighting for the rich people of Georgia, and Gunn was fighting for rich
people everywhere.

Gunn started off by offering his 'associate' a bribe. The ever dutiful Supreme Court justice James
Wilson approached Senator Jackson with the promise of half a million
acres of prime Yazoo lands, in exchange for his support, or at least
his silence on the Yazoo swamp-land sale. Senator Jackson replied
that he had fought the Revolution for the people of Georgia, and “the
land was theirs, and the property of future generations” At least
that was what Senator Jackson said he said. But Jackson knew what he
was facing. As another observer noted, there was “nothing is going
on here but land speculation...by northern sharks, together with a
few Georgians who only act as lackeys.”

Jackson immediately knew he needed
allies. In February of 1795 President George Washington sent a copy
of the Yazoo land sale to Congress, and suggested it violated a
treaty his administration had signed with the Indians. Not that
Washington was looking to protect native American claims to the land
they were living on. Washington just wanted the Federal government to be
responsible for moving them off. And Senator Jackson helpfully
offered a bill authorizing Washington to negotiate a treaty to do
just that. Like I said, the good guys and the bad guys in most
situations, are not all that different, personality wise. Its who
profits from their actions that matters.

As word of the bribery and the low sale
price leaked out, the public outrage exploded. On 28 March, 1795, the
Augusta Chronicle newspaper called the sale “a hellish fraud”. Inspired, an
organized mob marched the 30 miles from Augusta to the capital
of Louisville, intent upon lynching the Yazoo Gang - those members of
the legislature who had voted for the sale. All of the gang still in Louisville ran for the hills, and the 'Augustinians' were
reduced to hanging them in effigy. In fact every member of the Yazoo
Gang state wide was forced into hiding. Some had their homes burned.
A few who were caught were beaten, a few tared and feathered and run
out of town on fence rails. Some were shot at. One legislator, so the
story goes, was even tracked down hiding in Virginia, where he was
lynched - and not in effigy.

Jackson thought about resigning his
seat in the U.S. Senate to fight the sale, but Gunn's rehearsed
process preceded so quickly that it was over before Jackson could
move. The depressed Jackson wrote to a friend, “I have really a
good mind to...turn speculator...There is a damn sight more to be got
by it” But after being encouraged by the uproar in Georgia, he took heart again, resigned from the Federal Senate, returned home and began writing anonymous
letters to the newspapers attacking the sale.

“The enormous gain of the
speculator,” wrote Senator Jackson, “and the magical conversion
of funds of the state into the funds of the individual” were
destroying peoples' faith in their government. He told the citizens of
Georgia that “It remains to you to decide whether you will nip
this aristocratic influence in the bud, or leave it to be torn up by
your children...thus rendering them subservient to the base and
servile passions of a few Nabobs…Patience and moderation are no
longer virtues, but the most infamous offices, and will be detested,
with their owners, as the sycophants of a venal day.”

Grand juries were convened throughout
the state to investigate the bribery and attempted bribery of their
local representatives. Most towns held public meetings to denounce
the sale. The general population was up in arms because since 1780
Georgia had followed the “head rights rule”, under which each head
of a family had the right to 200 acres of unclaimed land, plus fifty
acres per family member. With land ownership came the right to vote,
and a rise in social status. The truth was the vast majority of
Georgia's hoi polli would never take advantage of the head right
rule. It required investment in an ax, a cow or goats or pigs, and
some equipment, which not that many people had the funds to buy. And
even with that investment, starting a head right farm meant clearing
unclaimed land, which was back breaking work, and dangerous, and most
who tried it failed. But in 1795 owning land was the American dream.
And the Yazoo Gang had bought that dream, and cheaply at that.

This push and pull between the “haves”
and the “want to be haves”, was resulting in the first political
split in the American republic. Along with slavery, it was the
original wound in America, and both are scars that we keep reopening
because we continue to treat
them as “absolutes”; i.e.. we call them the “haves” and the
“have nots”. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who were both land speculators, favored a strong central government, and
called themselves Federalists. Thomas Jefferson, another land
speculator, favored a weaker federal government, and his allies
called themselves Democrats. Senator Gunn, when he had a political
philosophy, was a Federalists. Senator Jackson called himself a Democrat. But those labels had very little to do with
what had happened and what was about to happen in Georgia. Gunn was
an arrogant selfish hothead, and Jackson was an arrogant slightly
less selfish hothead. The battle was between these two men who hated
each other, not between doctrines.

The citizens of Georgia had already
decided they needed a new Constitution, to match the new Federal one,
but their constitutional convention which began on 3 May 3, 1795, was apoplectic
over the Yazoo sale. The delegates could do little more than move the capital
to Augusta, demand an investigation into the Yazoo sale, and then
exhausted, adorned. Jackson won election to the Georgia
Assembly in the fall of 1795. In fact, in that election, all but two
of the Yazoo Gang were voted out of office. The voters had spoken. In
fact, the Yazoo Gang greatly strengthened the argument for universal
suffrage. It turned out property owners were just as venal and prone
to human failings as people who did not own property.

It was a spirit loose in the air, even in the heart of English
minister and poet like Christopher Anstey. Ten years earlier this
gentle man had been moved to write a long poem he called
“Speculation”. “Whatever wild fantastic Dreams, Give Birth to
Man's outrageous Schemes, Pursu'd without the least Pretence, To
Virtue, Honesty, or Sense, Whate'er the wretched basely dare, From
Pride, Ambition, or Despair, Fraud, Luxury, or Dissipation, Assumes
the Name of—Speculation.” There was very little in Dr. Anstey's
poem, written a decade before the French revolution, which does not
apply to today's To-Big-Too-Fail bankers and hedge fund speculators.

Once in office, the new “Reform” Georgia Assembly would waste
little time in dealing with the Yazoo gang. And that would open a
whole new box of trouble, greed and lawyers.